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Will Gas-Powered Cars Rule for Another 25 Years?

With electrics like this, how can they fail?

Electric cars are the transportation solution of the future, but that future might be farther away than we think.

There’s so much talk about automakers increasing the number of EVs in their fleets by 2020 that we might start believing an all-EV future is right around the corner. California has toyed with the idea of banning the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2030 and Norway has proposed eliminating new internal-combustion car sales by 2025.

If laws were passed tomorrow to limit the number of new internal-combustion cars, it would likely take almost two decades to bring half the overall fleet in that jurisdiction to electric propulsion.

No law outright banning operation of any vehicle with a tailpipe has been proposed anywhere, as far as we know, even in Norway.

Like it or not, we can be sure that gas-powered cars will account for our transportation needs for many decades to come.

OPEC predicts that oil-based fuels will still power 94 percent of cars on the road in 25 years. OPEC, of course, makes billions of dollars on the production and sale of fossil fuels, so it has an exceptional interest in advocating against electric cars and other alternative fuel sources.

Without a technology breakthrough, battery electric vehicles are not expected to gain significant market share in the foreseeable future.

OPEC is confident that even as cars become more efficient, the overall use of oil-based fuels will grow in the next 25 years as countries such as China and India create more demand.

That means, by 2040, we could still be in a debate about which fuel-source is the better choice while EVs struggle to gain popularity. But there’s another possibility.

What if the majority of Western countries evolve toward electricity while countries such as China, India, and Russia embrace fossil fuels? Maybe the demise of fossil fuels will happen in stages and spread throughout the world over the next few decades, rather than happening everywhere all at once.

I believe the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom will lead the way in EV advancements, and that our citizens are ready to embrace them on a mass scale. OPEC doesn’t want to see it happen, but electrics may have reached the point of being unstoppable.